Thursday, May 28, 2009

Jorge Colombo drew this week’s The New Yorker cover using 'Brushes', an application for the iPhone, while standing for an hour outside Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in Times Square.

“I got a phone in the beginning of February, and I immediately got the program so I could entertain myself,” says Colombo, who first published his drawings in The New Yorker in 1994.

There’s a companion application, Brushes Viewer, that makes a video recapitulating each step of how Colombo composed the picture. Colombo leans heavily on the Undo feature: “It looks like I draw everything with supernatural assurance and very fast — it gets rid of all the hesitations.”------------

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

I read a lot of books. Some of them are a joy to read, others are rewarding and informative. Once in a while I come across a book that is both. Atheist Delusions is one of those books.

David Bentley Hart is an Eastern Orthodox Christian, philosopher and theologian. And he has a jumbo-size axe to grind. As he explains in the first lines of the book's introduction:

"This book is in no sense an impartial work of history... In what follows my prejudices are transparent and unreserved, and my argument is in some respects wilfully extreme..."

What follows is 240 pages of glittering prose that demolishes many popular secular conceits, while demonstrating how the Christian message has shaped the civilization we live in, immeasurably for the better.

There are not many academic books that make me laugh out loud (well, not intentionally anyway). Hart's book did. Frequently.

This is not an eirenic book. To quote from pages 3-4:

"The God Delusion, an energetic attack on all religious belief, has just been released by Richard Dawkins, the zoologist and tireless tractarian, who - despite the embarrassing incapacity for philosophical reasoning - never fails to entrance his eager readers whith his rhetorical recklessness..."

he then goes on to dismiss Christopher Hitchins, Sam Harris and Philip Pullman with similar one-line put-downs, followed by:

"And one need hardly need mention the extraordinary sales achieved by Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, already a major film and surely the most lucrative novel every written by a borderline illiterate..."

To find out more about the book, visit Amazon.com and read some of the reviews. Oh, and if you do decide to read it, make sure you've got a dictionary handy. Dr Hart writes brilliantly, but he does like to let you know that his vocabulary is a little wider than most.Thanks to Jason Clark for putting me on to this book------------------------

The jolly typeface has spawned the Ban Comic Sans movement, nearly a decade old but stronger now than ever, thanks to the Web. The mission: "to eradicate this font" and the "evil of typographical ignorance."

"If you love it, you don't know much about typography," Mr. Connare says. But, he adds, "if you hate it, you really don't know much about typography, either, and you should get another hobby."

Mr. Connare, 48 years old, now works at Dalton Maag, a typography studio in London, and finds his favorite creation - Magpie - eclipsed by Comic Sans. He cringes at the most improbable manifestations of his Frankenstein's font and rarely uses it himself.

The proliferation of Comic Sans is something of a fluke. In 1994, Mr. Connare was working on a team at Microsoft creating software that consumers eventually would use on home PCs. His designer sensibilities were shocked, he says, when, one afternoon, he opened a test version of a program called Microsoft Bob for children and new computer users. The welcome screen showed a cartoon dog named Rover speaking in a text bubble. The message appeared in the Times New Roman font.

Mr. Connare says he pulled out the two comic books he had in his office, 'The Dark Knight Returns' and 'Watchmen', and got to work, inspired by the lettering and using his mouse to draw on a computer screen. Within a week, he had designed his legacy.

A product manager recognised the font's appeal and included it as a standard typeface in the operating system for Microsoft Windows.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Eucalyptus is an iPhone application that that lets you download and read books from the expansive Project Gutenberg library of free public-domain works. Judging from its Web site, it’s comparable to Amazon’s Kindle application – except all the content is free, and the interface looks to be prettier. The asking price is $9.99.

Except Apple rejected the program for including material that is “obscene, pornographic, offensive, or defamatory.” The material in question is the Kama Sutra, which has been offending (and intriguing) people for centuries. It’s not included with Eucalyptus – no book is – but it’s available at Project Gutenberg, and you can therefore use Eucalyptus to read it.

If the mere fact that an app could be used to download something dirty was enough to ban it from the iPhone, of course, Apple’s own Safari would never have made it onto the phone

My guess is that Apple’s policies don’t really ban Eucalyptus. It seems far more likely that the app fell victim to an overzealous and underinformed member of Apple’s staff who twisted the intent of the App Store’s rules and applied them in a way that nobody ever meant to enforce them.

All our designs can also be ordered as finished stitched pieces, mounted and framed, or, we can customise and create unique image using your own image

Urban Cross Stitch is the brainchild of London based pattern-cutter, Phil Davison. After taking time off from the couture fashion world, Phil learned to cross-stitch in Arkansas, USA, where an elderly family friend taught him the basics.

On returning to London Phil was inspired to combine his newfound love of cross-stitch with his existing love of street art, so created his own brand, Urban Cross Stitch.------------

The device connects VCRs, set top boxes, camcorders, DVD players, and other analog video sources, anything that uses composite RCA or S-Video outputs, to the Mac via a USB 2.0 interface. The package also comes with a SCART adaptor to connect the supplied RCA or S-Video cable.

With one click, videos can be transferred to iTunes, played back in QuickTime, uploaded to YouTube, or opened in iMovie for final editing says Elgato.

"The image quality of both cameras is up there with the very best in almost any shooting situations, be it bright daylight or low light conditions. At higher sensitivities none of the cameras in this comparison can cut the mustard but the ZS1 and 3 are simply not quite as bad as some of the competitors."

"The ZS3 is currently just over a $100 more expensive than its ZS1 sister model which is easily justified by the larger and higher resolution screen (which is much better than the ZS1's) and the HD video mode. As a customer that leaves the choice with you. If video is not a priority and you can live with a standard resolution, smaller screen you get, with the ZS1, a camera that is very similar to its bigger brother at an attractive price point."------------

Friday, May 15, 2009

If you watched the Watchmen credits roll thinking, “I really wanted to watch more of those Watchmen, I wonder when the extra footage Zack Snyder promised will arrive”, prepare to get your answer.

A director’s cut of the movie is arriving Stateside on DVD/Blu-ray 21 July featuring an additional 25 minutes of footage, including Hollis Mason’s death and more Rorschach.

Those who want to see Snyder’s master version – with Tales From The Black Freighter anime footage edited into a complete cut of the film itself – will have to wait a while longer, since the director has said that it won’t arrive until later this year or early the next.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Here are over 40 big Apple product icons that are great for using in web designs. These are all big enough to be used as a focal point in a header for example, or along side content as supporting design elements.

Before using, make sure to check with the artist about the terms of use. Some may require permission to use commercially.------------

A pound heavier, an inch wider, less than an inch deeper and almost exactly the same thickness as the 15" MacBook Pro it replaces, it is a beautiful piece of engineering.

The migration of 200GB of data took less than two hours, and apart from a few de- and re-authorisations of applications the transition was fuss-free.

Boasting the same pixel-count as an Apple 24" display, the 1920 x 1200 (anti-glare option) screen is the best laptop screen I have ever used. And the lack of a glass screen means that my fingermarks don't show at the top of the screen where I open it, and that there is a handy recess for my Crumpler screen protector.

In just about every other way, it is as quiet, fast and well-behaved as the 15" it replaces. The 'scrabble pieces' keyboard (I chose the U.S. option as I prefer the larger right-hand return key) takes a bit of getting used to, but I now prefer it to previous Apple keyboards.

I don't use the trackpad much, preferring to plug in a Mighty Mouse. But on the occasions I do use it, it is smooth and predictable. The lack of a 'clicker' at the bottom is initially irritating, but using the one-finger tap gestures works just fine.

I've owned a range of Mac laptops since the release of the Powerbook 540 in 1994 and, so far, the 17" MacBook Pro is my favourite.------------

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

A Time to Kill is based on John Grisham's novel of the same name. Set in Canton, Mississippi, the film starts with the vicious rape and brutalisation of a young black girl by a couple of drunk white men, followed by the assassination of the arrested rapists by the girl's father, Carl Lee Hailey and the subsequent murder trial of Carl.

It is a gripping film that mixes courtroom and 'real-life' drama in equal measure. There are a number of sub-stories that make the film even more fascinating and watchable. All the cast play their parts convincingly, and anyone with a heart will find themselves with tears in their eyes on a number of occasions.

However (and it is a big however) I found myself agreeing with the conclusion emotionally, but heavily disagreeing with it intellectually. Without wishing to give away too much the film steers far too close to the 'Follow Your Heart' school of morality for my comfort.

I don't think that the producers of the film are unaware of this, and the tension between 'letter-of-the-law' justice and grace are dealt with well. And, more disturbingly, I don't have any easy answers myself.

Oh, one last thing, if (like me) you are squeamish about rape scenes, watch the beginning of the film, but skip to the next scene when you see what's about to happen.------------

Friday, May 08, 2009

The Gocycle Electric Bike uses injection molded magnesium to keep its weight to an extremely light (for an electric bike) 16.3 kg including its 250 watt motor and 9Ah MiMH battery which allows you to travel for a claimed 6 to 20 miles 'with pedal input'.

Reviews of the bike so far have been very positive. The GoCycle website is an essay in 'user-unfriendly', but it looks like UK users have to purchase the bike via some kind of government-subsidised scheme for about £600.------------

Thursday, May 07, 2009

Hipster Girl - MC Lars: Lars is a 'Nerdcore' rapper. Think Weird Al Yankovic without the production budget and you'll be getting close. Some very funny observational stuff.

I'll Play What You Want - Toy Horses: If you've been thinking 'what the world really needs is a ukulele-playing band from Wales', you're in luck, as long as Scouting For Girls' lawyers don't get to them first.

Digital Photography Review have just published a full review of Fuji's latest high-end compact. To summarise the summary...

"Followers of Fujifilm's compacts will see the F200 EXR as sitting in the shadow of the much sought-after F30 and F31fd, but for the wider market it's undoubtedly a much improved camera."

"The F200 EXR proves itself to be a very pleasant camera to use. It'll do all the thinking for you - produce reliably good images without you having to understand color filter arrays or worry about what's going on behind the scenes."

"The way the EXR Auto system works lends itself particularly well to users that don't want to post-process (nor worry about what post-processing is), but just want clean photos from family get-togethers and holiday snaps with fewer bleached-out white skies."

"Alternatively you can specify which mode the camera uses, adjust more of the settings and take a bit more control of your shooting... on the whole it's a camera that can be trusted to help rather than hinder your photographic ambitions."

"So it's both a camera for the family and one that a keen photographer can enjoy and get some great results out of. It's built around a very useful lens (28-140mm is not a range you'll find matched by other cameras this small), and offers image quality at least up to the standards of its contemporaries."

"The EXR modes are worth having - the dynamic range mode is astonishingly capable if you're happy with the 6MP output."

"While it's not the breakthrough camera we hoped it might be, it's at least as good as its peers and occasionally better."------------

Monday, May 04, 2009

As such I take between 1 and 1000 iPhone images every day and share at least one online with the world via Twitter and Facebook. These images are uploaded directly from my iPhone, with no Photoshop retouching.

Friday, May 01, 2009

Lexcycle, Inc.'s blog announced that Amazon has purchased the company including the popular iPhone eBook reader Stanza.

According to the Lexcycle blog, there will be no changes to the Stanza application or its function as the result of the acquisition. They imply that they hope they will be able to offer more books and services through the Amazon connection.------------